


Unrelenting Force

by Varanu



Series: The Sexth House [2]
Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-21
Updated: 2014-08-21
Packaged: 2018-02-13 20:54:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2164848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Varanu/pseuds/Varanu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Fus. It is called "Force" in your tongue. But as you push the world, so does the world push back. Think of the way force may be applied effortlessly. Imagine but a whisper pushing aside all in its path. That is "Fus." Let its meaning fill you. Su'um ahrk morah. You will push the world harder than it pushes back.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unrelenting Force

The breathing exercises made sense. But it always struck Ulfric as utterly nonsensical to sit and think about thu’um. About _meanings_. About dragons and dragon language and if it were a language why couldn’t he just learn it and be done? And it never struck him harder than when he was meditating on _fus_. _Force_. How could he learn to understand force by sitting on cold stone, letting his ass grow numb?

Today it was more than he could bear, and so he stood and stalked out, past Master Eingar and Master Borri, out into the biting wind of the courtyard, where the sky blew alternately clouded and clear, changing almost by the minute. At the courtyard’s edge he could see the gate that marked the path to the Throat of the World.

In seven years of training he had never seen anyone go up that path, to where Master Arngeir had told him the great Master Paarthurnax lived alone, and suddenly his own inadequacy, his failure angered him. Seven years and not a single word of power.

“How goes your contemplation of _fus_?” Arngeir said, quietly.

Ulfric turned. Even after all these years of silence, Arngeir still had the power to startle him. “Poorly, I’m afraid,” he said, shortly. 

Arngeir sighed. “I did not have you meditate on _fus_ to frustrate you,” he said. “I thought it would suit your temperament and inner nature.” In a rare gesture of affection he laid his hand on Ulfric’s shoulder; Ulfric felt the dry warmth of his hand almost as a shock. “Why not leave it for today, then,” he said. “I will be by later, and perhaps we can find a way to break this block.”

“Thank you, Master Arngeir,” Ulfric said, but he did not hold out much hope, and it must have been apparent in his voice, from the sudden keen look the old man gave him. Bitterness welled in him. Only long-ingrained respect kept him from shrugging off Arngeir’s hand. “I’ll be in my room, then.”

“Don’t meditate,” the Greybeard told him, and let his hand fall. “Kyne will show you her power, soon enough.”

The afternoon passed in a blur, and transitioned into evening, the stones of High Hrothgar growing dim and faintly purple as the shadows deepened. In any other hall the air would have swelled with the smell of roasting meat, the mingling of male and female voices, and the clang of forks and knives and tankards of mead. But Hrothgar was silent, each mute Greybeard taking his sustenance either alone, in his own cell, or not at all, like Master Paarthurnax in contemplation on his mountain, sustained only by Kyne’s breath.

Ulfric himself did not venture out of his room all evening, and thus was one of those who did not eat at all, though he suffered for it. When the room grew too dim to see, he rose and stirred the embers in the fireplace, turning them over to expose their glowing hearts, and then returned to his silent brooding, sitting on the bed he had claimed on his first day in this tomb, a mere stone slab covered by a pair of wolf pelts to keep the chill from his bones. To keep his ass from growing numb, he thought again, bitterly. _Fus,_ indeed.

“Ulfric,” he heard, and half-turned. Arngeir stood there, wearing not his usual Greybeard robe but a thinner, softer thing, for sleeping in. His feet were bare, and Ulfric shivered in sympathy, thinking of the biting cold Hrothgar’s stones always, always held, even at the height of summer.

“Master Arngeir,” he said, rising.

But Arngeir whispered something almost inaudible, and Ulfric found himself paralysed. Swifter than his eye could follow, Arngeir pushed him to the bed and covered him, kissing his mouth, his beard soft and a little scratchy against his face and throat. “This is the meaning of _fus_ ,” Arngeir growled. “I will not give you my understanding of force, but I will demonstrate it to you.”

Through the sudden hammering of his heart, Ulfric thought he understood. _Force,_ he thought, shaped the image of Arngeir being driven back,and half-shouted, “ _Fus!_ ”

The shouted word did nothing, and Arngeir responded with another kiss, muffling Ulfric’s words with his mouth, savagely biting his lips until Ulfric tasted blood. Ulfric shoved the Greybeard back, but Arngeir chuckled and murmured a string of words that left Ulfric dizzy and disoriented.

“Master—” he started to say.

“Silence,” Arngeir said, and cuffed him across the head.

It had been years since anyone had dared to discipline him so. Ulfric could not help but growl at the indignity, like the wolf he was named.

“If you cannot control your tongue, then you have no place here,” Arngeir said. “Be _silent_ , Ulfric, or demonstrate to me that you do not need this lesson.”

Ulfric made as if to sit up, and Arngeir disoriented him again, harder, so that this time he reeled, nauseated. Arngeir’s hands were rough on the ties of his clothing, undoing them, until the cold air struck his bare skin like a blow. He tried to respond, and could not, tried to struggle and could not.

For the first time, the cold finger of fear touched him. He had never been defeated in battle, not since he was a stripling boy. But here was a foe he could not fight, no matter how he fought, how bravely he roared.

He was too weak to ever truly understand _fus_ , let alone wield it.

He was unfit to continue on the Way of the Voice.

Numbly, he lay still in the realization, while Arngeir’s hands moved over him. He did not really care. Pain and physical indignity was nothing to the knowledge that his breath was insufficient for thu’um, the truest expression of a Nord’s soul.

After a moment he felt Arngeir pause, and look at him. “This is what you believe _fus_ to be,” the Greybeard said. His voice was soft again, more like the Arngeir Ulfric knew. He sat up. “You think that force is simply the ability to impose your will on another. That force is the mere application of strength.” He paused. “I thought the same, once,” he said. “But when you push the world, Ulfric, the world always pushes back, and it will always be stronger than you are.”

_He was not unworthy._ Past the relief, Ulfric heard himself saying, “What is force, then?”

“It is… difficult to explain in words.” Arngeir spread his hands, almost apologetically. The familiar, habitual motion seemed strange in his half-dressed state. “I can demonstrate it to you, if you like. If you ask.” He put his hand on Ulfric’s shoulder, warm and dry, just as it had been that morning in the courtyard.

Arngeir’s knee was still between his thighs, his aged body near enough that Ulfric could feel his heat. Ulfric understood. Or thought he understood — he had been wrong twice already, after all. He found he did not mind. Seven years ago, he might have protested — but he had been younger then, and more arrogant. He understood better, now, the sacrifices to be made for power. For wisdom.

And… it had been a long time. Voice or not, it would be good to be touched.

“Yes, Master Arngeir,” he said, and was rewarded with a smile. Arngeir touched his shoulders, then bent and kissed him. Ulfric closed his eyes and shuffled them into a more comfortable position on his bed, pushing thought from his mind.

They did not say anything. Speech was irrelevant to this. For a while they only kissed, lips to lips and tongue to tongue, Arngeir’s beard soft on his neck. Ulfric wondered if this was how Arngeir planned to transmit his knowledge, but after a while he decided it was only kissing. With dry, almost papery hands, Arngeir stroked his shoulders, his arms, the curling hairs of his chest, tracing the great cicatrix down his side where he had been cut long ago, in his very first battle, in what felt like another life, down there in Skyrim.

He would never have dreamed of fucking a Greybeard, in that life. Had certainly never dreamed of being fucked by one, as it rapidly became apparent he would be. Ulfric gasped as Arngeir raked blunt nails down his hips and thighs, making him buck slightly upward, cock rising despite the cold, despite everything. It had been a long, long time. “Master,” he said, not knowing what he wanted. To be touched. To be left alone. To learn the Voice, and as if he had heard the thought Arngeir laughed a little, in his age-roughened whisper.

“Patience,” he said, and pulled something — a long bit of dark cloth, color indistinguishable in the dimness — out of one of the secret pockets this sort of undergarment always held. Ulfric kept a handkerchief in his own, personally, and a couple of septims. The cloth unrolled, and turned out to be two pieces of cloth, with a bit of paper twisted up inside them. Arngeir untwisted the paper and opened it, and did something Ulfric couldn’t see. He craned to look, but Arngeir let the crumpled paper fall to the ground and palmed Ulfric’s cock with a hand grown suddenly slick, and Ulfric knew what the paper had contained. 

“Master,” Ulfric said again, then shivered as Arngeir reached for the two pieces of cloth, something deep in his belly telling him what they were for, why a Tongue would carry a gag against his skin.

“Open your mouth,” Arngeir whispered, and after a moment’s hesitation Ulfric did. The gag was tacky against his tongue and the roof of his mouth, the two ends trailing out so that he could not accidentally swallow them. “Now roll over.” Ulfric obeyed, blindly, and Arngeir reached over his head and slipped the second gag between his teeth, tying it tightly behind, holding the first gag firmly in place.

It was cold, in that little cell, and dim, and suddenly, gagged, Ulfric was not sure he wanted to continue. But Arngeir touched his back, and the slight weight of his hand soothed Ulfric, enough to breathe evenly if a little faster than usual when Arngeir’s hand slipped down his back, over the curve of his buttocks—

Ulfric could not stop the soft huff of breath that escaped past the gag when one of the Greybeard’s fingers slipped inside him. The first finger was followed by a second, and Ulfric shut his eyes, and tried to concentrate on the feeling of Arngeir’s fingers inside him, slow and steady, stroking him over and over, stretching him uncomfortably. After a moment Arngeir realized his discomfort and began to stroke his cock as well, rousing it back to readiness. Ulfric sighed in gratitude as the pleasure let him relax, just a little.

Soon the feeling of Arngeir’s fingers in him grew oddly pleasurable, though strange. He wanted to speak, but succeeded only in making an inarticulate noise past the gag. Arngeir laughed again, and power stirred sleepily beneath the surface of his voice. The air in the room trembled and lay still, and Ulfric felt his balls tighten, yearning for that strength. He pushed back, wanting more of it. He was so close. An ounce more pressure against that sweet secret Arngeir was stroking over and over, and he knew he would spill. If he had not been gagged he would have begged. He moaned again, and Arngeir let go of him completely — fingers in his ass, hand on his cock, everything.

Desperate, Ulfric took himself in hand, stroking hard and fast to take the terrible edge off his desire, and succeeding only in sharpening it. Arngeir’s dry hands smoothed gently over his back, Arngeir’s voice murmuring like the touch of a dry, rough hand itself. Arngeir’s cock against him, nudging him, pressing in until cold sweat sheened Ulfric’s skin, impaled on aching agony.

“Shh,” Arngeir soothed him, stroking his hip. Ulfric felt the Greybeard press a dry kiss to his shoulder, beard soft against his spine. “Relax. This is _fus_. Let me show you.” And he began to move, slowly and rhythmically, and the sensation that moved through Ulfric was like the surf in its power.

“This is _fus_ ,” he repeated, almost breathlessly. His cock was heavy in Ulfric, moving slowly and steadily. Ulfric moaned past the gag as Arngeir’s cock moved past something within him, as Arngeir stroked him, as the sound of Arngeir’s voice sent shivers through the pit of his belly, impossibly keen. Arngeir’s thumb slipped across the head of his cock and Ulfric couldn’t help but push into the touch. The pleasure grew with each thrust, slipping-sliding sweeter and sweeter until Ulfric could hardly think.

“You feel it coming, don’t you?” Arngeir murmured. “Try as you might, you can feel it coming. It will overtake you, Ulfric, and there is nothing you can do about it.”

Ulfric tried. He did, but Arngeir was moving in him, Arngeir’s hand was tight on his cock, breath on his back and it had been so, so long—

He couldn’t help but cry out, his shout muffled by the gag as his orgasm swept over him, throbbing through him, inexorable, undeniable, unstoppable, unrelenting, _fus, fus, fus_.

The world shook, and then slowly, slowly, righted itself again. But it was not the same. The pleasure still echoed in him, like a harp echoes after the string is struck.

Arngeir’s hands were surprisingly gentle as he removed Ulfric’s gag. “Speak,” he commanded.

“ _Fus,_ ” Ulfric whispered, and the wind of the Voice fluttered in the furs that draped his bed.

Arngeir smiled at him. “Well done, Ulfric,” he said. “I should have realized earlier that meditation alone would not be enough. I had the same trouble with _fus,_ when I was a young man.”

Ulfric stared at him dumbly, as Arngeir rose and dressed himself, smoothing his beard until for all apparent purposes, he was just as composed as if he and Ulfric had never touched at all. Now ready, he turned to go. “Get some sleep, now,” the Greybeard said, almost as an afterthought. “You’ll need the energy tomorrow, when you learn to control your new Shout.”

“Master.” The word was torn from Ulfric’s throat, raw as it was. “Is it… is this how you learned the meaning of…?” He stopped himself just before he said the word again.

Arngeir turned back, inclining his head in solemn affirmation. “You should consider yourself lucky, Ulfric,” he said. “I learned _fus_ from Master Paarthurnax.”


End file.
